Can 11,000 be written １.１万?

Question

I have seen 11,000 written as １万１０００, but not as １.１万 (the way one may write '3.5 millions'). Is this possible?

Answer 1

Yes, we do sometimes utilize a large number as a unit for brevity, and of course it is customary to use powers of 10⁴ (万, 億, 兆...) in Japanese, instead of those of 10³ (thousand, million, billion...).

The decimal representation could be seen everywhere I think the English counterpart would be used except when the discrepancy of order matters; for example, beneath a viral tweet usually shown:

which is in the Japanese UI:

where you can see a decimal is followed by 万 (ten thousand).

As an aside, in some fiscal or statistical documents they use 10³ scale (such as 123.4千円 or 56.7百万人), in order to align the order with the international convention. But this is quite unusual practice outside the field.

Answer 2

I think you can but it's somewhat uncommon in general usage. However, it can be used often in some scenarios such as when one is renting a property. Here are some examples I found:

人口1.1万（2010）(From the デジタル大辞泉 entry for the city of 夕張)

仕事後の寄り道　月1.1万円 (From a Nikkei article)

家賃5.5万円以下物件特集ページ (From a rental page)

However, I don't think this construction is used a lot in general. You can surmise this from the number of questions on Chiebukuro about similar constructions.

Answer 3

If you put 1.1万 into google you will see how it can be used. It is possible to use it but from all of the examples I saw on the first 5 pages of google it seems to mostly be used in a statistic rather than normal messages or replies. So if you are putting it in a statistic I would say it is ok, other wise 1万1千 seems to be the go to or just 11,000.

Hope it helps.